Today I played in a concert which featured three works: one well-known - Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, one over-known: Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, and one really unknown: William Alwyn's Lyra Angelica for Harp and Strings. After the concert, the one thing that audience members, one after the another, kept saying was how wonderful the Alwyn was, how much they enjoyed it and why in the world had they never heard it before? Even orchestra members who didn't play on it commented on how beautiful it was and they wished we played more music like that, and explore the repertoire out there rather than slog through th Tchaik symphony - again. There's hope!
I'm thrilled to read that! I've always held Alwyn's Lyra Angelica to be a real gem. Little wonder the audience and fellow musicians reacted in the way you describe. It is a perfectly constructed and deeply felt work. I also simply can't understand why Alwyn isn't far more well known. The record companies have done their bit - on Chandos there has been a long string of most of the orchestral works conducted by Hickox, and in recent years a series of Naxos recordings with Lloyd-Jones equally up there with Chandos. I don't know whether the remark is justified or not, but I've often felt that, in both their lifetimes and the years afterwards, those presiding at Aldeburgh have felt that there isn't room here in Suffolk in East Anglia for two major composers. Alwyn has been squeezed out - to everyone's loss. Perhaps the same goes goes this forum, for I noticed that in the transformation from the previous to the present forum with (quite rightly a greater emphasis on the criteria for 'unsung romantic') a thread on Alwyn quietly disappeared. I was saddened by that silencing, and a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater I thought.
But back to Lyra Angelica - yes, a gem of a work. And may your fellow players and orchestra soon discover many of the other orchestral works of Alwyn!
Quote from: petershott@btinternet.com on Monday 12 November 2012, 09:47
Alwyn has been squeezed out - to everyone's loss. Perhaps the same goes goes this forum, for I noticed that in the transformation from the previous to the present forum with (quite rightly a greater emphasis on the criteria for 'unsung romantic') a thread on Alwyn quietly disappeared. I was saddened by that silencing, and a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater I thought.
Well, Alwyn's not a romantic, at least not in his 'serious music'. Accessible - yes; tonal - mainly. Romantic - no. That distinction was fundamental to the decision we took back in August. I for one thought it had been clearly understood...
I have known and treasured Alwyn's Lyra Angelica since the first Chandos recording, around 1990. In my top 10 concertos of all time, regardless of instrument.
Let's not go further into this topic, please. It lies outside our revised remit.
Ok. Please understand that I was not trying to sneak a 20th c composer into the forum, just trying to point out that there is desire for unsung composers...no more.
Understood. Thanks!